Custom music editing and remixing for dancers and choreographers

Tag Archives: dance

When editing, cutting or mixing music yourself, don’t let the audio degrade. Be careful when you do audio editing. Sometimes I get requests to fix or clean already-edited songs, and when I hear the edit supplied, it sounds like a bunch of squirrels have gotten in and trenched the music.

There are many reasons audio can get degraded, and many different types of problems that inexperienced music cutters can create. When you put degraded music on stage, it’s really not much different than putting a dancer on stage with a tattered costume.

Here are just a few things to watch out for:

Don’t let the volume drop. You don’t want your music to be far softer than everyone else’s. Trust me, this happens.

Don’t turn up the volume either. You may not hear the distortion on your laptop or iPad, but when played on a large sound system, the distortion sounds terrible and piercing. I’ve heard this in competition a number of times as well.

Don’t make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of an mp3, or get the audio from YouTube. People think that you can make a copy of a digital audio file, and it will never degrade. That’s true of AIFF or WAV files, where all of the audio information is retained in the file. But mp3 degrades the audio a little bit every time it’s saved. So when you make a copy of a copy it gets worse, just like a cassette (though not as dramatically worse of course). One generation of high quality mp3 is not that much worse than the original. But several copies like this, and it sounds awful compared to the original.

Recently a dance teacher requested a mix of songs, for the benefit of a little girl fighting stage 4 cancer. This teacher wanted to use the song All You Need Is Love combined with others for a 2.5 minute routine. I added the Tom Petty song I Won’t Back Down and wrapped it up with With a Little Help from My Friends. To create freshness, I used cover versions of all of these songs; Brandi Carlile’s upbeat version of All You Need Is Love, Blake Shelton & Dia Frampton’s The Voice version of I Won’t Back Down, and concluded with Brandon Roush’s The Voice version of With A Little Help From My Friends.

This uplifting and original Squirrel Trench mix is perfect for any dance routine designed to pay tribute and be inspiring to someone going through a tough time, whether it’s a medical battle or the loss of a loved one.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to do better at a dance competition? Well wonder no more because Cathy Roe, the founder of Cathy Roe Ultimate Dance competitions has spelled it out for you. Here is the link to her recent Facebook post on this topic, How to Stand Out at Competition. Here are the most important things as Cathy has listed them:

Technique

Rehearsal

Stage Presence

Originality (including unique music!)

Dance within your abilities

Be classy and age appropriate

Show Good Will

Innovative choreography (including using music that connects with you!)

Out of the eight most important things to score well and stand out at a dance competition, TWO of the items include the musical aspect. Reprinted here is the full text of Ms. Roe’s comments on these two aspects, musical aspects emphasized in bold:

4. Our motto “Dare to Be Different” means BE UNIQUE, BE ORIGINAL! I used to tell my students that if we heard a song at a competition, that was a guarantee that we would NEVER dance to that song. There is no dearth of exquisite, exciting, original, emotional, clever, mesmerizing music. If you haven’t checked out Spotify, it’s fantastic for finding music! And as for dance themes…. we see a lot of “love gone wrong” themes, especially from our soloist. The soloist that stands out has a unique and interesting message or song that makes the judges sit up and pay attention because they haven’t seen/heard it before.

8. Bring innovate choreography. How? Be yourself. Think about your life, what you love, your experiences. Listen to music until you find that song that hits you right between the eyes and you say YES! I GET THAT! I FEEL LIKE THAT! Tell a story that matters to you. Forget about imitating anyone and especially because you think what they do what “wins”. Be in it to love it; to be an artist; to be a leader. Be an original thinker, a path finder! My judges are people (that it took me years to find) that will appreciate you for it. But just remember, with all the innovation in the world, we can’t see your vision without technical dancers that can execute it. So I must go back to #1 because it is the technique of your dancers that will display your vision like fine paint on and expensive canvas.

Squirrel Trench Audio is in the business of delivering UNIQUE, original music and remixes to competitive dancers. There are two different ways we can help you in this regard. If you have a music idea, or songs you’d like remixed together, you can use this Request Form to get a price quote from us. In addition, we have a library of unique music remixes for you to choose from on Legitmix. Just take a listen, and if you find one that connects with you, you can purchase it immediately, no waiting! Here’s our catalog of unique remixes:

The full-length clean version of Uptown Funk is available here on Legitmix for only $4.99. This clean version features the exciting intro as performed on Saturday Night Live, as well as being sped up slightly for maximum excitement while retaining the fantastic groove.

In some cases, the words “sexy” and “flaunt it” need to be taken out as well. For those instances, we have the super squeaky version where that has been eliminated also:

In addition, there are five edited versions available for just about any dance routine you might need; 2:58, 2:46, 2:32, 2:16, and 1:59. They are available individually for $9.99, or you can buy every length for $11.99:

Lyrics that have been eliminated from these clean versions include “damn” “bitch” and “put some liquor in it”. “Sexy” and “Flaunt it” have also been removed from the super squeaky clean version and the shortened versions. Click on the above PDF link to see the full lyric contents. Words that have been eliminated are shown with a strike-through.

We also do custom editing, so if you need a version of Uptown Funk, but didn’t find exactly what you need here, use the online Request Form here.

While 2015’s Super Bowl was one of the finest from a sports perspective, Katy Perry’s halftime entertainment may have stolen the show. Inspired by this amazing spectacle, this Queen of the Super Bowl mix features the first two numbers from this performance, Roar and Dark Horse. The length is 2:41 for a jazz or hip hop dance routine.

Guess what day it is? GUESS. WHAT. DAY. IT. IS! It’s Squirrel Appreciation Day! (No, I have never heard of that before either, but I guess it’s really a thing.)

In honor of Squirrel Appreciation Day, it is our turn to appreciate YOU, our fabulous clients who keep Squirrel Trench Audio busy with all of your custom music editing and remixing requests! And to show our appreciation to you, we are giving away a FREE edit of Colbie Caillat’s beautiful song “Try”, which is perfect for a lyrical dance. Get your FREE copy of Try right here on Legitmix:

Due to the runaway popularity of our clean version of Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars’ Uptown Funk, we’ve created an album containing every length (six) of this song, that we’ve created to date. Our clean version of Uptown Funk is super-smooth – no awkward hiccups to interrupt the song’s funktastic groove! Most of our clean versions also include the exciting intro as performed on Saturday Night Live – an intro which is not heard on the iTunes release of the song.

This album contains six different lengths of the song, and is a terrific bargain at $11.99, a savings of 78% compared to buying each version of the song individually!

The six versions of the songs are: 4:28 (full length), 2:58, 2:45, 2:32, 2:15, and 1:59. One of the lengths is sure to be perfect for your jazz, tap, or hip hop competition or recital dance routine.

Due to popular demand, Squirrel Trench Audio is pleased to announce a clean, full-length version of Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars’ groovetastic Uptown Funk. This version has several unique twists, including the spicy intro as performed Saturday Night Live. This intro is only available here at Squirrel Trench Audio! Potentially objectionable lyrics have been removed with NO disruption to the funktastic groove. Removed lyrics include “hot damn” “bi*ch” and “put some liquor in it”.

This clean version sounds even better than the original!

Best of all, due to this song’s amazing popularity, this version is now available for only $4.99. NOW GO GET YOUR GROOVE ON!

Bullying is an all-too-common problem for young people as they enter middle school and high school. Dance can be very therapeutic and helpful to relieve the anxiety of bullying tendencies, and art is always a great way to get through with a message. Squirrel Trench Audio has put together a soundtrack that could serve as the musical foundation for your lyrical dance conveying an anti-bullying message. The music is a shortened version of Vitamin String Quartet doing a cover version of “I’ll Stand By You” originally written by Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders.

In addition, we have a the same version of “I’ll Stand By You”, but without the added dialogue here:

As a holiday thank you to our wonderful clients, here is a FREE clean edit of Text Me Merry Christmas by Straight No Chaser, featuring Kristen Bell. This version has been edited and cleaned to remove all potentially objectionable lyrics. In this form, the song is completely G-rated, and safe for the whole family. The length is 2:30 for a jazz or tap dance routine. A 2:00 length version is also available below. Just click the link of either version and follow the instructions to get your free edited version.